I’ve written before about how we are a family who is crazy about advent calendars. We usually have three advent calendars going in December and we sometimes have as many as five! A toy calendar for each of the boys, chocolate calendars and my favorite of all of them — the activity advent calendar!
A few years back, I created a set of printable advent activity cards that have proven to be pretty popular. I decided to refresh them a little this year to make them a bit less specific to our family. I’m republishing them with the updates here:
 Download Advent Activity Cards #1 |
 Download Advent Activity Cards #2 |
Click the images or the links up above and a PDF that you can print will open in a new window. To learn more about how we use these cards in our reusable advent calendar go to this post: Advent Crazy.
Most of the squares on these sheets are pre-filled with activities that our family does every single year: putting up the tree, making cookies, decorating a gingerbread house, and other things along those lines. Each of the printable sheets also has a few blank squares so I can add new activities to the rotation. I’ve been digging around a little for some fresh ideas and I’ve found a couple of fun resources I’d like to share:
- Modern Parents Messy Kids Family Advent Activity List — There are some fun, fresh ideas on this list. My particular favorites are the idea to take each child shopping separately to pick out gifts for his brother and dad, making our own wrapping paper and making candy cane playdough.
- Adriel Booker’s list of 150+ advent ideas — Holy mackeral! Tons of ideas here! My faves: make caramel corn (maybe add Christmas-y sprinkles?), light a fire in the fireplace and roast marshmallows, and make videos of each family member singing a Christmas carol. How cool will that last one be 10 or 20 years from now?
If you like the thought of a countdown calendar, but the mere thought of organizing something like this stresses you out, I say just buy an advent calendar! Here are a few I recommend:
- LEGO City Advent Calendar
— This one is for Augie.
- LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar
— And I got this one for Wyatt.
- Playmobil Forest Winter Wonderland Advent Calendar
— We did this one last year and it’s adorable!
Is it a little excessive to have three advent calendars? Yeah, probably. But it makes the kids happy and I love the fun we have with them too.
Do you do an advent calendar with your kids?
* This post contains affiliate links.
